A Brief History of Video Games: The Arcade Years: Part 6

The next great alien attack came in 1980 in the form of Defender, also known as Oh-My-God-Is-This-Game-Hard. The game had roughly 114 buttons, 3 joysticks, and a thing you put your foot in. No one knows why you had to put your foot there, you just did.

The object of the game was to kill alien ships before they could capture the helpless humans, transport them to the top of the screen, and then, presumably, eat them. Why they felt a need to do this was never explained. I always assumed it was because humans were tasty.

I took Defender personally. It was simply implied that the aliens in Space Invaders were going to wipe out the Earth. The aliens in Defender actually ate people, a certain percentage of which were probably cute girls. This could not be allowed. However, I was not the person to stop them, seeing as how I really, really stank at Defender.

I was pretty good at video games and with few exceptions, could get a decent amount of play out of a single quarter. Not Defender. I rarely got past the second level and basically died immediately on the third. Sinistar was probably the only game I was worse at. I played and played and played and played and after dropping probably twenty bucks, I gave up. All the cute girls were left to be snatched up and eaten by aliens. This mirrored my dating life in high school, save that instead of being eaten by aliens, the girls were dating jocks. Sigh.

Next: Missiles!